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Google's New About Me Tool Is the Anti-Google+

Posted by timothy on from the no-such-thing-as-undersharing dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Google has launched a new tool called About me that lets you see, edit, and remove the personal information that the company's services show to other users. Google confirmed to VentureBeat that the feature started rolling out to users this week. Google's various products and services (Gmail, Hangouts, Google Maps, Inbox, Google Play, YouTube, Google+, and so on) sometimes ask you to share certain personal information. These details are then shown to other users who interact with you or search for you. Until now, all of this was stored in Google+, assuming you created an account. But Google+ is no longer a requirement for Google's services, and so the company needs a new solution, and ideally one that isn't public by default.

8 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. With Apologies to Niels Bohr: by Pseudonymous+Powers · · Score: 4, Funny

    "The opposite of truth is falsehood. The opposite of an irrelevant Google service is another irrelevant Google service."

  2. Main challenge to me by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you ever pissed off google by violating a rule or policy, they could (and did in some cases) disable the google+ account. Which had the effect of killing all your associated google devices.

    So the risk was too great to actually use google+ and associate it with my devices. I hate facebook, but if they ban me, I'm only banned from facebook. Google needs to firewall physical devices from any chance of ban problems due to offenses in other google services or it's not worth the risk of using them.

    --
    She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    1. Re:Main challenge to me by Maxo-Texas · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Here's an example:
      Google+ Account suspended so now they can't use Youtube (really an unrelated service).

      https://productforums.google.c...

      The more services tied to your google+ account, the greater the risk of it being suspended.

      https://productforums.google.c...

      My Google Wallet account was suspended today. Google Support tells me that my account won't be reinstated, due to violations of terms of service. They won't tell me specifically what I violated, and refuse to acknowledge my questions. I've used GMAIL for over 10 years. 2004 I signed up for the BETA for my first Google account. Today I'm suspended. I don't even care about the Wallet honestly, I just care about the Play Store. I can no longer purchase applications from the Play Store. With Wallet suspended, how can I even use my Android device now? This is insane.

      http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
      From a Google VP.. while google+ suspensions only effect services requiring a google+ account, he goes on to say "Of course there are other Google-wide policies (e.g. egregious spamming, illegal activity, etc) that do apply to all Google products, and violations of these policies could in fact lead to a Google-wide suspension."

      That's a big 'etc."

      --
      She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
    2. Re:Main challenge to me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Dude, the Internet works just fine without Google.

      Actually, it kind of doesn't.

      A very large amount of all the web pages on the internet now load pieces of themselves from google domains and don't work well or at all without those pieces. googleapis.com anybody? It's all over the fucking internet. Want to sign up for a site? Oh, that requires google's "recaptcha" service. You can't sign up without letting google know.

      Want to email them and complain? Well, that non-google-looking contact address is actually served by gmail.

      More than most people know, the internet can no longer be used normally without google. Try blocking everything from every google owned IP block, and using the internet. Some sites might work, sure, but many of the most popular ones won't. Most people would consider it "broken". We are handing not just all our personal info google, but de-facto control over the web as well.

  3. Welp, this still uses Google+ by Sowelu · · Score: 4, Informative

    In step 3 (the advertising preferences thing), if you try to modify what it says your google profile is for advertising purposes, it asks you to create a google+ account for the privilege.

  4. "Sometimes ask" - hehe by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    >> Google's various products and services (Gmail, Hangouts, Google Maps, Inbox, Google Play, YouTube, Google+, and so on) sometimes ask you to share certain personal information.

    Google starts collecting everything it can about who you are and what you do in all its products and services unless you explicitly go down into the basement and yank seventeen different files from a bathroom with a sign that says "Beware of the Leopard."

    FTFY

    This whole "you need to spend an hour on our site hoping you've tweaked your privacy settings correctly, at least until we change everything again in three months" is BS. As the family tech guru, I've gone from teaching people how to use non-IE browsers to how to install the best possible Ad/Flash/tracking-blocking software I can find on all their personal computers and devices.

  5. Can't edit some things by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What good is a tool like that if you can't edit everything? I have a birthday listed, that is wrong - I can make it private but I can't fix it.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  6. YouTube still needs Google+ for commenting by jonwil · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Despite Google saying otherwise, it is still impossible to comment on YouTube without first creating a Google+ account.